The Toronto Star reports that MRSA, the worrisome strain of staph that is resistant to antibiotics, has been on the rise in North America, where it was once acquired mainly in hospitals. But the article cautions that findings are preliminary, and that researchers haven’t even figured out if there are lots of bacteria on the positive samples, or just a few.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the CDC maintains that reports of pigs being the source of MRSA in humans are greatly exaggerated. The National Pork Producers Council would also like to draw our attention to a report by the Institute of Food Technologists that noted that “correlating the risk of antibiotic use in animals and antibiotic resistance in humans is not possible.” Hmm, are they trying to reassure us that all this antibiotic-resistant staph couldn’t be the result of overfeeding antibiotics to livestock?